Monday’s blood results weren’t as bright as I’d hoped: wbc at 1.7, rbc at 6.0, meaning office visit for this week is definetely out of the picture, and so is most of anything. I’m not saying I’m not disappointed, but then, this is the learning bit for me: I’ve never been good at patience games. Discpline games (like a treatment), yes. Patience, no.
Anyway, I did a bit of a calculation, this is why it’s good to have all blood results at file, so you can do calculations. Left alone (so not bombed by chemo), my body seems to generate about 0.3 units of rbc per week. Considering a conservative growth pattern (so not assuming that rbc generation speeds up as time goes on), this means it’ll take around 8-9 weeks until my red blood count gets back to normal territory (8.5 is the bottom of the normal range). I can’t do the same calculation for wbc as my wbc has always been assisted by G-CSF, but safe to assume it’ll take a similar amount of time for it to go back to normal, too.
With that, I spent most of my yesterday sleeping, and generally feeling like shit. (Like shit that’s also sleepy.) That seems to be gone now (walking a short 3.6 km helped big time), but I’m still anaemic. Also, this is still a 3rd week, so what do I expect other than regular 3rd week stuff, right?
Last but not least, an inventory of residual side effects:
- Anaemia: as above, this will probably take 2-3 months to go away.
- Neuropathy (reduced sensation in my fingers): I still have it, healing time in the range of “weeks, months”, according to the doc.
- Arms and veins: they hurt a bit, time to time, I guess the IV doesn’t just go away that quickly. Not a major annoyance though.Hair: stil doesn’t grow, not that I’m bothered… Will start growing in “weeks, months”, I guess.
- Eyebrows, eyelashes: they need to grow back. I have 1 (ONE) eyelash that is still around. Hang in there, little hero hair!
- My face (through which I am detoxing at the moment and it looks like Mickey Rourke’s): this is an interesting one, so far Prednisolon was the answer — I wonder how long it’ll take without my ‘roids.
This is more or less it. I was thinking about drawing a diagram and a Plan-on-a-Page (I’m a PM or what), but… meh, instead let’s go to the playground with the kids!